Joseph Jones

From 'Diesel Engineering', Spring 1977:

From apprentice to managing director
(An appreciation by Percy Jackson, MSc, of the late Joe Jones, who spent his entire professional life with one firm.

Joe Jones, as he was commonly known to many of your readers, died at his home in Romily near Stockport on October 30, 1976, aged 83 years. He was well known to all engaged in the manufacture and use of gas and oil engines in the period from 1930 to 1960. He joined the National Gas & Oil Co Ltd in 1908 as an apprentice and worked his way through the various departments of the Company to finally become managing director in 1951-6.
Soon after finishing his apprenticeship he was responsible for the installation and commissioning of the larger National engines in many parts of the world and was promoted to manager of the Large Engine Department of the National Company about 1931. I first knew him about 1935 when I was Chief Engineer of Blackstone & Co Ltd of Stockport in 1937 - we were near neighbours, and there was a common link in that Henry N Bickerton, the original founder, chairman, and managing director of the National Co, had put up much of the money to found Mirerlees Bickerton & Day Ltd at Hazel Grove, Stockport.
Joe Jones invited Charles Day and me to the Aston works in 1937 to see a large six-cylinder diesel engine running with Buchi exhaust gas turbocharging with Brown Boveri turbo-blowers giving about 7.6 bar (110lb/in2 bmep) when most large engines with natural aspiration were rated at 4.8 bar (70lb/in2bmep). Joe Jones was I believe the first man in this country to adopt turbo-charging in a large multi-cylinder engine, but he was quickly followed by myself and others, until towards the end of the Second World Warl turbo-charging became very popular and superseded the naturally-aspirated engine and bmeps approached 9.7 bar (140lb/in2). By this time aftercooling of the charge air was being introduced which enabled mean pressures to be further increased.
He was promoted to the position of chief engineer of the National Co in 1939 and was then responsible for all the products from small horizontal to large vertical engines. He immediately set about improving the small vertical engine and developed it into one of the highest-rated low-consumption light-duty engines of the time.
About this period Jones was engaged in what was, looking back, his greatest achievement. He had initiated experimental work which led to the develpment of the high-compression gas engine and in 1940, National produced and marketed a gas engine of 228.6mm bore by 304.8mm stroke running at 600 rev/min with a bmep of 5.2 bar (75lb/in2) and a compression ratio of 12.5:1, with injection of seven to 10 per cent of fuel to initiate ignition. This was the first dual-fuel engine, and the first high-compression gas engine to be produced in the world, and caused quite a sensation amongst ic engineers the world over, particularly in the USA, where gas engines were in considerable use, burning natural gas from the oil fields. Mr G R Hutchinson had published the first article on the dual-fuel high-compression gas engine in your paper Gas & Oil Power, now Diesel Engineering, and I am told by him that the article created the anticipated stir in international ic engine cirles.
Gas engines of that day were restricted to a compression ratio of a maximum 6:1 and bmeps of 4.8 bar (70 lb/in2). Even under these moderate conditions considerable water injection was required to minimise heavy pre-ignition in the cylinders. It was therefore a great step forward when the National Co introduced the high-compression gas engine and it puzzled many engineers, including myself, as to how it had been accomplished. In retrospect it would appear to be due to the fully machined combustion space, small exhaust valves of the modern engine and the speed of 600 rev/min, relative to the large valves and 200-300 rev/min of the 1920 engines. I believe the high-compression ratio gas engine to be due to the use of a weak mixture just about on the weak limit of air/gas ratio which suppressed auto-ignition. This mixture then needed a high-energy source of ignition from the pilot oil injection, and a spark would not have sufficient energy to initiate combustion. The later work on the high-compression spark-ignition was similar and needed transformers in the ignition system to a high-energy spark to promote combustion. When many other manufacturers the world over and particularly in the USA jumped on the Jones bandwagon and began to produce high-compression dual-fuel engines, I once asked Joe Jones why he had not patented it. His reply was to ask me what there was in the develpment to patent! About this time Nordberg had converted a blast-injection diesel engine to gas operation, the gas being blasted into the cylinder with a small quantity of fuel oil. This was an alternative idea that also proved successful.
After introducing the dual-fuel engine, Joe Jones developed all the other possible combinations of the high-compression gas engine; a high-compression gas engine with high-tension spark ignition (and therefore no fuel oil) and an alternate-fuel engine to run on either gas with spark-ignition or fuel oil only. Both these developments were copied by other manufacturers. The alternate fuel engine in particular was illuminating. It was surprising how much quieter the engine was when running on gas than on fuel oil. As Joe showed me, the compression and maximum pressures and load were the same, while the pressure rise in the combination diagram showed, if anything, a steeper rise when running on gas. The significant difference was that the fuel pumps were out of action while on gas, and this led to our useful investigation of hydraulic knock from fuel pumps.
Joe Jones attempted to develop a supercharged version of the high-compression gas engine by injecting high-pressure gas at about 3.45 bar (50lb/in2) through ports into the cylinder at the beginning of the compression stroke. This scheme had been patented by a Mr R Erren, a German-born engineer now forgotten by most. The National Co had appreciated the possibilities of this development and had acquired the Erren patent rights and experimental apparatus about 1938. This engine never reached the production stage but about 1954 National successfully produced turbo-charged dual-fuel and spark-ignition gas engines. Large turbo-charged dual-fuel engines were installed in Borneo, burning natural gas, about 1955, and in Saskatchewan in 1956. There are now, of course, many turbo-charged duel-fuel engines in operation.
Joe Jones had a knowledge of gases and their properties only perhaps equalled by one other in this country, the late Cyril Yeates of Crossley Premier, previously the Premier Gas Engine Co Ltd of Sandiacre. This pair, Jones and Yeates, were the leaders and mainstays of gas engine develpment in this country in the post-World War II world. The National Co under Jones' encouragement were the first in the UK to appreciate the possibilities and merits of the SLM hydraulically-operated reverse-reduction gearbox, acquired the British licence and set up a small manufacturing plant at Ashton before the last World War. Joe Jones was, I know, very upset when the National board decided to abandon this and surrender the licence to SLM's British associate, Tom Hindmarch, with an understanding about favourable prices for gearboxes from the factory which Hindmarch was to set up, with the Minstry of Supply, about 1942.
Joe Jones was, I believe, also the first oil engine man in the UK to initiate experiments (about 1937) with a four-valve cylinder head for larger medium-speed four-stroke engines. He used alternate inlet and exhaust valves to give good air induction and provide swirl without using masked inlet valves. Operation of the valves was initially by hydraulic action, but this was quickly dropped due to excessive noise and timing problems. However, since he foresaw the advantages of four valves for higher outputs for both naturally-aspirated and turbo-charged engines, he persisted with the diagonal arrangement of an air valve and exhaust valve on the front and an exhaust valve and air valve at the back, operated by mechanical levers from the camshafts. Jones and his assistant John Smith had a joint patent on this arrangement. The air and exhaust piping and valve gear were much more complicated than the arrangement with two air valves on one side and two exhaust valves on the other, one behind the other, which has become the favoured arrangement for posterity.
After the War, when the late A P Good had acquired control of the National Co and had amalgamated it with his Associated British Oil Engine Group, he made Joe Jones managing director of National. This was in 1951, when there was a great demand for the horizontal single-cylinder oil engine of pre-War type, from Egypt and India particularly. Joe Jones quicly set about tooling up and manufacturing the National horizontal engine in quantities not hitherto achieved in the UK, and this brought considerable prosperity to National. Unfortunately after some four or five years both Egypt and India imposed heavy duties on the import of these engines, and the demand fell off ovenight, causing much disruption at National.
Jones then turned his attention, with A P Good's backing, to comparatively powerful gas engines to run on the natural gas from Middle East oilfields. He secured some big orders, and himself went to supervise the final commissioning of several plants. This was, I believe, his final task before he retired in 1958 at the age of 65, after 50 years with the National Co at Ashton-under-Lyne. He was ably assisted during all this work by his assistant John Smith, who became successively chief engineer and technical director of the National Co, and is now director of engineering with Petters Ltd of Staines and who was awarded the OBE in 1973. Joe Jones was also assisted by W Lowe, BSc, as development engineer, now holding a similar but superior position at the Hazel Grove works of Mirrlees Blackstone Ltd. Both these associates of Jones have checked and assisted in the compilation of this record, and I am grateful to them.
Joe Jones was a founder member of the British Internal Combustion Engine Manufacturers' Associaton, and of the complementary Research Association; he was chairman of each for two years. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, and was awarded its Thomas Lowe Gray prize for his paper, "The position and develpment of the gas engine," in 1942. He had previously given a paper entitled "The dual-fuel engine" to the Diesel Engineers and Users Association in 1940.
Jones was a born engineer with his feet on the ground, and always inspired admiration and loyalty from his staff. He did not have the benefit of a university eduation nor any degrees, but he had attended night school at Ashton Technical College. He had a natural ability, which enabled him to initiate and follow the calculations involved in ic engine design. After his retirement he set up as a consulting engineer with an office in Ashton, and carried on as such for over ten years. He was a great friend of the writer and of the earlier Editor and Proprietor of Gas & Oil Power and of the Marine Engineer, Mr G R Hutchinson. He will be missed by a wide circle of 'engine men.'

END


From Alan Ray-Jones:

Uncle Joe was the star turn on our father's side of the family. We didn't know much about them as a group, sadly. Because of the war and our father's death, our contacts with them when we were young were very limited, almost non existent, and that pattern persisted. But Uncle Joe stood out. Although he was my father's brother he seemed amazingly different. Where my father was artistic (as was another brother, Sam, a musician), Uncle Joe seemed immensely practical - the article above gives the flavour of it. Where my father found it difficult to earn a living or make his name in the world, Uncle Joe did both. It just seemed incredible that they could be brothers. My clearest memory of Uncle Joe is of dropping in to see him and Auntie Cathy with Elizabeth when we had recently got married, so possibly in the mid-fifties, when he was at the peak of his career, shortly before he retired. I remember that most of his garden was a very close-cut lawn, which seemed to be very afflicted with moss. I think we talked rather a lot about it, but this may only have been because we didn't have a lot of subjects in common. He had a very fiery complexion I remember, and was well built - not a man to have an argument with perhaps, though he was extremely friendly with us. I'm not even sure that we were aware that he was MD of National at that time, but it was evident from his house that he was in the big time.